Master's · earnings grade

Is a Legal Research degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $73,949 two years after finishing, more than 65% of master's majors. Measured across 166 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

The verdict on the money

Yes — graduates earn more than most majors at this level.

Median earnings $73,949 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $51,607–$83,325 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree +$34,429 vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 9,029 166 programmes

Where a Legal Research degree pays best US programmes ranked on their own graduates' median earnings two years out.

#	University	1 yr out	2 yrs out	3 yrs out	Graduates/yr
1	Georgetown University	$109,015	$118,650	$124,664	541
2	Seton Hall University cost & debt at this university →	$88,307	$101,406	$91,499	81
3	University of San Francisco cost & debt at this university →	not published	$97,959	$105,769	58
4	Loyola University Chicago cost & debt at this university →	$89,863	$97,071	$88,922	120
5	Boston University cost & debt at this university →	$87,263	$96,829	$104,284	214
6	University of Florida cost & debt at this university →	$93,755	$96,183	$108,258	86
7	The University of Alabama cost & debt at this university →	$80,715	$91,744	$89,742	29
8	University of San Diego cost & debt at this university →	$91,786	$84,653	$98,598	31
9	George Washington University cost & debt at this university →	$88,848	$83,325	$87,914	140
10	University of California-Berkeley cost & debt at this university →	not published	$79,875	not published	324
11	Southern Methodist University cost & debt at this university →	$54,909	$78,971	not published	38
12	Yeshiva University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$74,576	not published	20

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $73,949 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $67,660 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is higher here, which means the larger programmes in this field are the better-paying ones.

It is the median of what real graduates of this exact major earned, taken from tax records two years after they completed. It is not a starting salary, not an average of job adverts, and not a projection. The median master's major in this dataset reports $52,837, so Legal Research sits above the middle by $21,112.

Two years is early in a career. Fields with long training pipelines — medicine, law, research — look weaker at this point than they will at ten, while trades and applied technical fields peak sooner. Read a low figure in a long-pipeline subject as "slow start", not "bad degree".

There is no debt figure here on purpose. The Department of Education publishes earnings by field of study but not borrowing, so nobody can honestly tell you the debt of a specific major. Debt is published per institution — that is where our university cost pages carry it.

Majors that pay more at this level Closest first — useful if you are still choosing.

Management Information Systems — $69,535 Air Transportation — $70,184 Business — $70,876 Civil Engineering — $71,015 Information Science & Studies — $71,255 Genetics — $72,671

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Legal Research: the questions people ask

How much do Legal Research graduates earn?

The median master's graduate earns $73,949 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 31 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $63,265.